AIDS study spurs Haitian outrage

A new scientific finding that AIDS came to the United States from Africa via Haiti, probably arriving in Miami as early as 1969, stoked controversy among researchers and Haitians on Tuesday -- reopening deep wounds over the medical community's role in perpetuating a stigma against people from the island.

Published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study aims to better explain the origin of AIDS, whose history involves a virus with a sketchy story line that began in Africa in the 1930s and emerged in Los Angeles in 1981.

The findings were based, in part, on blood samples taken from about 20 Haitian patients at Jackson Memorial Hospital as early as 1979. The samples were frozen, stored at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and reanalyzed by the study's authors, including a researcher at the University of Miami.

''We were seeing patients at Jackson Memorial with what we now call AIDS, and at the time we didn't even know it,'' said Dr. Arthur Pitchenik, co-author of the study and a professor of medicine at the University of Miami Medical School. ``I started seeing Haitian immigrant patients with TB. They would get better from the TB only to die three to six months later from what we now call AIDS.''

Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the original discoverers of AIDS, said the analysis placed the HIV virus that causes it in the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously believed.

''It's pretty clear evidence for Haiti as a stepping-stone,'' he said. ``The suggestion that the infection was further below our radar than I'd previously suspected is kind of unnerving.''

''This is very credible work,'' added Dr. Margaret Fischl, a pioneering UM AIDS researcher. ``Their approach is the way it should be done. Some of my colleagues think this is really remarkable work.''

The findings drew immediate anger from Miami's Haitian community and raised concerns among some AIDS scientists, as well.

''People are going crazy,'' said Dr. Laurinus Pierre, executive director of the Center for Haitian Studies in Little Haiti. Pierre said he has fought stigmas against Haitians from the first days of AIDS, in which researchers blamed the epidemic on the ''Four Hs'' -- homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin addicts.

In February 1990, the Food and Drug Administration barred Haitians from donating blood in the United States, a policy that ignited scores of protests and highly publicized boycotts of blood drives. By December 1990, the FDA had scrapped its policy and developed a more rigorous screening of all blood donors.

To many, the policy pushed an already taboo subject in the Haitian community deeper in the shadows and discouraged many from seeking treatment, a phenomenon some say the latest findings could cause to happen again.

''This does a disservice to the Haitian community, who feel like they already went through this 20 years ago,'' said Dr. Paul Farmer, professor of medical anthropology at Harvard University and a founder of Partners in Health, an international research and aid organization active in fighting AIDS in Haiti. ``This is very slender evidence on which to base such a grand claim.''

''I don't think this is very helpful,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, a professor of medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. ``People love to play history, and it would be great to figure out who Patient Zero was. But there are doubts.''

The study's lead author, Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, defended his methodology Tuesday and denied any disservice to the Haitian community.

Worobey and his co-authors analyzed the frozen blood samples from about 20 of Pitchenik's Haitian patients at Jackson from the late '70s and early '80s. They set up a medical timeline that they say indicates the HIV virus arrived in Haiti in 1966 and in Miami by 1969.

Worobey said he estimated the timing of the virus' arrival by taking samples of the virus from the late 1970s to 2000. By knowing the rate at which the viruses mutate, he said he was able to create a picture of what the virus looked like in 1969. And by comparing viruses from the United States and Haiti during this time, he could deduce when the virus arrived in the States.

''It's a common technique used in genetic analysis and human evolution,'' Worobey said Tuesday.

The study concludes that AIDS arrived in Haiti after Haitians went to the Democratic Republic of Congo as workers after that country won independence in 1960.

It debunks the original ''Patient Zero'' theory that said the HIV virus came to Los Angeles via a gay Canadian flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. That theory was created by Dr. William Darrow and others at the CDC and turned into the 1987 book And the Band Played On, by journalist Randy Shilts. Darrow later repudiated his own study.

Pitchenik said he realized this week's study would be controversial in the Haitian community.

''I want to stress that this has nothing to do with race or sex or color of skin, and we should not stigmatize any particular group,'' he said.

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Haiti was simply very, very, unlucky. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate Haitian who, the genetic dating suggests, had managed to contract a virus that seems to have been quite rare (perhaps ~0.1% of the Zairian population at the time), then Haiti wouldn't have been infected so early, and the AIDS epidemics in the North Atlantic world and the Caribbean would have taken on an entirely different nature.

Politicizing science is foolish. One might as well call researchers who point out that the first few cases were among MSMs and that said demographic continues to suffer disproportionately from the virus homophobic. Blame the people who'd like to make use of this data to reinforce their prejudices; don't blame the data itself.

Obviously there is a lot of defensiveness among persons of Haitian descent posting here. Again, the study isn't laying blame; it's just indicating that by an unfortunate accident of nature the particular strain of HIV that dominates in the US "hopped" into some Haitians who were working in Zaire/Congo in the 1960s and happened to then be carried into the US and/or picked up in Haiti before being taken back into the US.

For those who said the study was tainted by a theory that Haiti was an intermediate point in transmission into the US...that's called the Scientific Method. One makes observations (such as the incidence of HIV among Haitians is highest in the Carribean/Western Hemisphere), then poses a hypothesis (Haiti was an intermediate point for HIV's journey into the US), test the theory through analysis (with the stored blood samples), attempt to disprove the theory (by testing to see if the genetic mutations suggested that the virus went from the US to Haiti; data showed it did not).

Not every person with HIV has their blood in long-term freezer storage. However, when an unusual or inexplainable disease first appears, blood is more likely to be stored. Also, it might be stored as part of a particular study, which may have originally been looking at something else but serendipitously later can be examined for something not even known to the researchers at the time of blood collection, which has happened with HIV tests performed on blood samples collected in the 1970s and 1960s as part of studies on things like hepatitis B vaccine or tropical diseases in Africa.
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If you read the PBS link I provided in an earlier post, you'll see that the researcher interviewed in the story in 2005 who had worked in the Congo in the 1960s as a teacher and had met expatriate Haitians working in Africa looked at the prevalence of HIV in isolated rural settings versus urban settings in the Congo over time. What he found was that the prevalence of HIV between the 1970s and 1990s in the isolated rural settings--where cross-species transmission from monkey or chimp to human probably occurred through contamination of a hunter butchering the monkey/chimp for meat likely occurred NOT through intentional infection by Belgians. In cities in the Congo, where there is great mobility and looser social controls that results in more sexual partners and use of injection drugs, prevalence skyrocketed over the same time. HIV made the leap from an isolated disease that occasionally hopped from monkey to human to a worldwide pandemic because of globalization. Aid workers with different cultural norms and who are mobile reached previously isolated areas and got infected. They took it to cities where residents had larger numbers of sexual partners and/or used injection drugs or the health care system repeatedly used the same needles. The disease migrated out with the infected workers to other parts of the world, including but not necessarily limited to Haiti. It spread among the Haitian population which was more Westernized in its social values and norms, resulting in greater sexual transmission. Infected persons moved to US and/or US visitors to Haiti became infected. This is a small study. It doesn't look at every single person infected with HIV worldwide. Haitians didn't infect everyone in the world, that is clear. But we need to not let nationalistic pride, racial defensiveness, or anything else cause us to refute a scientific approach and study findings. Further studies need to be done. However, I am very frightened by the memo by Stanley Lucas posted above. It outlines a plan to discredit the study through talking points and communications strategies rather than through evidence. This is the sort of approach practiced by the Bush administration that led us into an unfounded war.

Obviously there is a lot of defensiveness among persons of Haitian descent posting here. Again, the study isn't laying blame; it's just indicating that by an unfortunate accident of nature the particular strain of HIV that dominates in the US "hopped" into some Haitians who were working in Zaire/Congo in the 1960s and happened to then be carried into the US and/or picked up in Haiti before being taken back into the US.

For those who said the study was tainted by a theory that Haiti was an intermediate point in transmission into the US...that's called the Scientific Method. One makes observations (such as the incidence of HIV among Haitians is highest in the Carribean/Western Hemisphere), then poses a hypothesis (Haiti was an intermediate point for HIV's journey into the US), test the theory through analysis (with the stored blood samples), attempt to disprove the theory (by testing to see if the genetic mutations suggested that the virus went from the US to Haiti; data showed it did not).

Not every person with HIV has their blood in long-term freezer storage. However, when an unusual or inexplainable disease first appears, blood is more likely to be stored. Also, it might be stored as part of a particular study, which may have originally been looking at something else but serendipitously later can be examined for something not even known to the researchers at the time of blood collection, which has happened with HIV tests performed on blood samples collected in the 1970s and 1960s as part of studies on things like hepatitis B vaccine or tropical diseases in Africa.
\
If you read the PBS link I provided in an earlier post, you'll see that the researcher interviewed in the story in 2005 who had worked in the Congo in the 1960s as a teacher and had met expatriate Haitians working in Africa looked at the prevalence of HIV in isolated rural settings versus urban settings in the Congo over time. What he found was that the prevalence of HIV between the 1970s and 1990s in the isolated rural settings--where cross-species transmission from monkey or chimp to human probably occurred through contamination of a hunter butchering the monkey/chimp for meat likely occurred NOT through intentional infection by Belgians. In cities in the Congo, where there is great mobility and looser social controls that results in more sexual partners and use of injection drugs, prevalence skyrocketed over the same time. HIV made the leap from an isolated disease that occasionally hopped from monkey to human to a worldwide pandemic because of globalization. Aid workers with different cultural norms and who are mobile reached previously isolated areas and got infected. They took it to cities where residents had larger numbers of sexual partners and/or used injection drugs or the health care system repeatedly used the same needles. The disease migrated out with the infected workers to other parts of the world, including but not necessarily limited to Haiti. It spread among the Haitian population which was more Westernized in its social values and norms, resulting in greater sexual transmission. Infected persons moved to US and/or US visitors to Haiti became infected. This is a small study. It doesn't look at every single person infected with HIV worldwide. Haitians didn't infect everyone in the world, that is clear. But we need to not let nationalistic pride, racial defensiveness, or anything else cause us to refute a scientific approach and study findings. Further studies need to be done. However, I am very frightened by the memo by Stanley Lucas posted above. It outlines a plan to discredit the study through talking points and communications strategies rather than through evidence. This is the sort of approach practiced by the Bush administration that led us into an unfounded war.

Read "AIDS, Created In United States Laboratory" by Boyd Graves at boydgraves.com. AIDS virus was included in vaccinations on African people in 1962 with involvement by Dr. Robert Gallo and Russian scientists with $500,000 from secret visna program creating 15,000 lbs of AIDS virus.

We know what they are trying to do. They are trying to eliminate the HAITIANS. After what they've done in the past 204 years, they feel that is not enough. Today they are trying to enter our psyche and break our minds, by creating such a stigma. They do that because they know we are a small country of “Negro”, vulnerable, and defenseless. They can spit any garbage they want and nothing will happen. They are a bunch of cowards, because they should have had the guts the say out loud that they hate Haitians…period. They didn’t have to hide behind the mask of biased and incredible study on HIV/ AIDS to hit Haitians like that. Yes sir, it hurts…very, very badly.
This is pure cruelty for a couple of scientists to publish such stink garbage on Haiti. After we've forced FDA to back off from its unfair and racist campaign against the Haitian people; this is the turn of those scientists f to say that HIV/ AIDS came to the USA via Haiti. How cruel? After more than 200 years of humiliation, stigma, cruelty, torture, bad press, bad mouthing, and isolation; it is now enough. “They have done enough to Haiti…it is time for the pain to stop.

The origins of AIDS, and all other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), are the results of perverted sex acts (anal sex and bestiality) common among people of European, Middle Eastern and Asian extraction. Sex tourism, a favorite pastime of Europeans and Euro Americans, along with sex obsessed sailors, who continue to believe it is romantic to have a woman or man (any woman or man) in every port, are the principle vectors of the global STD epidemic with the tragic victims being poverty stricken third world inhabitants who sell their bodies to survive. Needless to say, this behavior continues to be ignored by the international medical/”scientific” community in spite of the tremendous global health crisis it produces. Obviously, global health “leaders” have agendas other than safeguarding the health of the vulnerable from sexually perverted, disease carrying travelers. Incidentally, according to the CBS magazine show, 60 Minutes, the first recorded AIDS/HIV symptoms were seen on a Norwegian ship in 1956; check it out.

Ok, why don't we stopped all our nasty homosexual behavior, and drugs abuse so we can find a cure for the disease. Put it this way: that's God's hands on us for keeping on praticing something he complety forbide, remember he had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them; What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities near them is an example for us of the punishment of eternal fire. having been guilty of gross fornication and having gone astray in pursuit of unnatural vice, are now before us as a specimen of the fire of the Ages in the punishment which they are undergoing.Because we committed sexual sins and engaged in homosexual activities, drugs abuse
and all kinds of nasty behavior; we are undergoing our own punishment. Don't blame it on innocent Haitians and Africans people.It's on us, let's stop putting our burden on somebody else like we always do and ask God for his forgiveness and direction so someday, somebody will find a cure for the disease so every nation, black, white, Red or Yellow will benefit from a job well done.
May God bless you all!

Oh boo f*****g hoo! this is impeccable, remarkable research, and the Haitian community just needs to f*****g get over it! The research doesn't blame the Haitian ethnic background or specific people, it just states that Haiti was an origination country for AIDS. Fact is fact. It's science, and if they don't f*****g like it, too f******g bad! They should read the search results, and heed the advice. STOP the practices which spread deadly diseases. Anybody with a drop of intelligence and a sand grain of common sense would do this.

Ah, my friends. So much judgment, so much anger. So much belief that you are on the right side and everyone else is on the wrong side. I wonder whose side poor "Robert R" was on. Remember him, the 15-year-old boy in St. Louis who died in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, in 1969? Do you remember how he died? He died of AIDS. Remember? Yes, he was probably infected in 1967 of HIV. That's right. How did he get it? From a Haitian? An African? A St. Louisian? We don't know. That's the tantalizing thing. We just don't know. What we do know, thanks to work like that of Prof. Worobey and others, is that it was a very early strain of the virus. It went way, way back. To where? Ask yourselves where? Was Robert R. abused? Did he drink out of the wrong soda can in the 7th grade? Did he make the wrong moral choice in Sunday School? When are you all going to stop preaching sermons and start focusing on the fact that a virus has no moral qualities attached to it?

Hey! Robert R!, Hmmm, you know you you've proberly touched on something there. In fact, that reminds me of the that poor little kid who lived in a bubble for all of those years to prevent Aids like complications from killing him. And of course, if you remember; when he became a little older, he requested that he be allowed to be removed from the bubble having full knowledge that he would surley die; which he did. Here's Wisdom; scientist could'nt or would'nt find a cure for that kid back in the late 60s to 70s, and 30 to 40 years later are no closer to any other remedy than a bubble. That it! maybe the bubble is metaphoric as a cure not only for Aids, but for all other diseases and now I'm sure that the only cure is the Greatest bubble of all. The power of God All Mighty; The salvation of his only begotten Son : Christ Jesus.

There is no doubt that AIDS erupted in the U.S. shortly after government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments (1978-1981) using gay men as guinea pigs. The epidemic was caused by the "introduction" of a new retrovirus (the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV for short); and the introduction of a new herpes-8 virus, the virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma, widely known as the "gay cancer" of AIDS. The taboo theory that AIDS is a man-made disease is largely based on research showing an intimate connection between government vaccine experiments and the outbreak of "the gay plague"

The widely accepted theory is that HIV/AIDS originated in a monkey or chimpanzee virus that "jumped species" in Africa. However, it is clear that the first AIDS cases were recorded in gay men in Manhattan in 1979, a few years before the epidemic was first noticed in Africa in 1982. It is now claimed that the human herpes-8 virus (also called the KS virus), discovered in 1994, also originated when a primate herpes virus jumped species in Africa. How two African species-jumping viruses ended up exclusively in gay men in Manhattan beginning in the late 1970s has never been satisfactorily explained.

Researchers who claim AIDS is a man-made disease believe it is much more likely that these two primate viruses were introduced and spread during the government's recruitment of thousands of male homosexuals beginning in 1974.

Large numbers of gay men in Manhattan donated blood for the experimental hepatitis B vaccine trial, which took place at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan in 1978. Extensive evidence supporting the man-made theory of AIDS is easily found on the Internet by Googling: man-made origin of AIDS; and in my two books, "AIDS and the Doctors of Death" and "Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot."

Government interest in "gay health" before the AIDS epidemic

Beginning in the mid-1970s, government scientists became interested in the health of gay men, particularly in the realm of sexually-transmitted diseases, and specifically in the sexual transmission of the hepatitis B virus. The early 1970s was a time when large numbers of gays come out of the closet and identified themselves as homosexuals at government-sponsored health clinics. Organizations such as the Gay Men's Health Project were formed at this time. Promiscuous gays were avidly sought as volunteers to test the efficacy of a newly-developed hepatitis B vaccine manufactured by Merck and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

By 1977 over 13,000 Manhattan gays were screened to secure the final 1083 men who would serve as guinea pigs to test the hepatitis B vaccine. The vaccine was manufactured from the combined plasma of 30 highly selected gay men who carried the hepatitis B virus in their blood. Developed over a period of 65 weeks during 1977-1978 and tested for six months in chimpanzees (the primate in which HIV is thought to have originated), the first group of gay men were inoculated at the New York Blood Center in November 1978.

That same year a final cohort of 6875 homosexual men at the San Francisco City Clinic was assembled to study hepatitis B virus sexual transmission in that city. By the end of the decade gays in clinics in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis, also came under surveillance by the Centers for Disease Control. An additional 1402 volunteers were finally selected to participate in similar vaccine experiments in those cities beginning in March 1980.

Before 1978 there was no stored blood anywhere in the U.S. that tested positive for HIV or the KS virus. There were no cases of AIDS and no cases of "gay cancer" in young men.

The first cases of AIDS appeared shortly after the experiment began in Manhattan. In June 1981 the epidemic became official and was quickly labeled the "gay ­related immune deficiency syndrome", later known as AIDS.

The gay community was the most hated minority in America. After the experiments ended, the gay community was decimated by the "gay plague." In the first years of AIDS, the epidemic was largely ignored by the government (see Randy Shilt's best-seller, "And the Band Played On") and the disease was blamed on gay anal sex, drugs, and promiscuity. Gays were immediately labeled "high risk."

In my view, what made gay men "high risk" was the fact that they were the exclusive volunteers for government medical experiments that undoubtedly put them at "high risk." The evidence for this conclusion is outlined in this report. Further evidence can be obtained from abstracts of scientific reports available on the Internet at the PubMed website of the National Library of Medicine.

The gay hepatitis B experiments (1978-1981)

The experimental hepatitis B vaccine injected into gays was unlike any other vaccine previously made. As stated, it was developed in chimpanzees and manufactured in a year-long process of sterilization and purification of the pooled blood of 30 gay men who were hepatitis B virus carriers.

The final group of 1083 selected for the first experiment at the Blood Center were inoculated from November 1978 until October 1979. At one point, there was great concern that the vaccine might be contaminated. According to June Goodfield's Quest for the Killers, p 86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination having been suspected in one batch made by the National Institutes of Health, though never in Merck's." Each gay man was given three inoculations of the vaccine over a period of three months. The vaccine proved successful with 96% of the men developing protective antibodies against the hepatitis B virus.

It has been assumed by some that these men might have been already immunosuppressed due to promiscuity and venereal disease. Although the young men in the study were indeed "promiscuous" (this was a requirement for entrance into the study), they were in excellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners, these volunteers had never been infected with the hepatitis B virus, which was a requirement for participation in the experiment. Furthermore, the 96% success rate would not have been accomplished if the men were immunosuppressed, because such people often do not respond to the vaccine.

When Robert Gallo's blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the New York Blood Center's stored gay blood specimens were reexamined. Most astonishing is the fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. In addition, we now know that one out of five gay men (20%) tested positive for the new KS herpes-8 virus in 1982 when stored blood samples from an AIDS trial in New York City were re-examined by epidemiologists at the NCI in 1999.

Never mentioned by AIDS historians is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" (but virus-infected) chimps back into the wild, perhaps accounting for some of the ancestors of HIV and the KS virus found in the jungle by some government researchers.

The Virus Cancer Program and the birth of AIDS

In the decade before AIDS the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, attempted to prove that viruses caused human cancer. Ultimately the Program was unsuccessful in providing proof, yet it succeeded in building up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to a more complete understanding of how cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses in animals might cause disease in humans. The VCP was also the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gay experiments began in New York City.

The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus into gay men during this period (along with some "novel" and now-patented mycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) miraculously revived the career of Robert Gallo and made him the most famous virologist in the world. And, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCP into a triumph by providing proof that these primate-derived viruses could cause disease in humans.

The fear of the hepatitis B vaccine

When AIDS began there were scattered reports in the medical journals questioning whether the "gay plague" might have its origin in the hepatitis B experiments. It was well-known in medical circles that the vaccine was made from the pooled plasma of gay men - and there was fear that the AIDS agent might be in the vaccine. As a result, when the hepatitis B commercial vaccine became available in July 1982, many people refused to be injected with it.

The fear of the vaccine was readily admitted by the CDC. Nevertheless, in detailed reports the CDC concluded that the vaccine was safe. Although it was clear the hepatitis B vaccine eliminated all "known" viruses, this obviously did not apply to "unknown" viruses at the time, such as HIV and the KS virus.

After HIV was discovered in 1984 some of the vaccine was retested and declared free of HIV. Of course, it was impossible to say whether the vaccine contained the KS virus, because this virus was undiscovered until 1994. I am unaware of any subsequent testing of the vaccine for this herpes KS virus.

Possible contamination problems with the hepatitis vaccine was the impetus that led Luc Montagnier to hunt for a virus in the new gay disease in the autumn of 1982. He began testing batches of human plasma for "reverse transcriptase activity", a biochemical sign indicating the possible presence of a retrovirus. (See page 46 of his book "Virus"). Montagnier's research eventually led to the first discovery of the AIDS virus at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Although the CDC and the New York Blood Center claimed it was safe, many health professionals refused the hepatitis B vaccine. In 1985, only 23 out of 162 Rhode Island dentists agreed to take the vaccine because of concerns about AIDS. As late as 1990, 13 out of 14 black nurses at a university hospital refused to take the vaccine for the same reason.

The fate of the gay men in the gay experiments

The purpose of the gay experiments was to test a vaccine that could immunize people against hepatitis B virus. Infection with this virus could lead to severe liver disease and sometimes to liver cancer. Ironically, an unprecedented explosion of cancer took place in male homosexuals after the experiment. Reports of the fate of these men attest to the fact that participating in the government's experiments was clearly injurious to the health of gay men.

Significantly, there were no reported blood specimens anywhere in the U.S. that were HIV-positive prior to the epidemic in 1979, except in the samples stored at the NYBC.

In a May 12, 1983, letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Cladd Stevens (who supervised the NYBC experiment) wrote : "No cases haves occurred in the vaccine recipients from populations at low risk of AIDS, and there is no excess incidence in the high-risk population." But this proved to be incorrect in later reports co-authored by Stevens.

In a 1985 report Cladd Stevens et al. claimed that seven men (out of 1083) were HIV-positive before they received either vaccine or placebo. If true, this indicates that HIV (and possibly the KS virus) was already present in the blood of Manhattan homosexuals and could have contaminated the pooled blood of gays whose plasma was used to make the vaccine in 1977.

As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

Another follow-up study of 8,906 gay men who donated blood for the hepatitis experiments in Manhattan was released in 1992. Statistical analysis of this group showed that mortality rates for men aged 25-44 began to rise in the 1980s, with AIDS the leading cause of death among young men in New York City. Remarkably, "The all-cause mortality in this cohort in 1988 was 24 times higher that the mortality rate in the cohort before the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."

Was the hepatitis B vaccine contaminated with HIV and the KS virus?

Largely forgotten in AIDS history is the hepatitis B vaccine trial that also took place with 685 gay Dutch volunteers in Amsterdam between November 1980 and December 1981. Unlike the American vaccine makers, the Dutch researchers heated their experimental hepatitis B vaccine for added safety.

A 1986 report of the trial clearly states the AIDS virus "was not transmitted by the heat inactivated hepatitis B vaccine." Of the 685 participants, five were already infected with HIV when the trial began. The researchers theorized that HIV entered the Dutch gay population at the end of the 1970s.

Another follow-up Dutch report of this trial in 1993 again suggests the efficacy of heating the vaccine for safety. (The experimental vaccine was not heated in the U.S. until after all the gay experiments were completed.) At the end of 1982, one year after the Dutch experiment had ended, only As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

7.5% of the Amsterdam men were infected. In contrast, 26.8% of the men in the New York experiment were HIV-positive; and a whopping 42.6% of the San Francisco men were HIV-positive. These statistics showing many men infected in the American trials in 1982 further prove that Cladd Stevens of the NYBC, and the CDC, were incorrect in declaring there was no excess incidence of AIDS in the "high-risk" gay male population.

The fate of all the men who participated in the hepatitis B vaccine trials in six U.S cities has never been revealed. However, it is likely from the statistics presented in JAMA in 1986 that many, if not most, of the men eventually died of AIDS. The actual number of AIDS deaths has never been revealed, nor have the individual medical records been studied. Attempts to secure this information have been rebuffed by the Blood Center, due to the "confidential" nature of the experiment.

"Gay Cancer" and the origin of AIDS

After the introduction of HIV and the KS virus into the U.S. gay male population in the late 1970s, the incidence of KS skyrocketed.

A 1989 report by Biggar found no cases of KS in young men in New York City during the years 1973-1976. But by 1985 the incidence of KS in "never-married men" in Manhattan had increased 1850 times. In San Francisco the rate of KS increased over 2000 times!

KS is now 20,000 times more common in AIDS patients than in the general population. A 1985 autopsy study by Lee Moskowitz of 52 AIDS cases (23 Haitians, 19 gays, 5 intravenous drug abusers, 2 hemophiliacs, and 3 persons at unknown risk) showed that 94% of AIDS patients from the various risk groups had internal KS. The CDC claims KS now occurs in only 15% of gay men (down from 30% at the beginning of the epidemic), but these statistics are not based on current autopsy studies

KS was never a sexually-transmitted disease before the introduction of HIV into gays. For a century after the first reported KS cases were discovered in Vienna in 1872, there was no evidence that KS could be transmitted from person-to-person.

By 1950, a more aggressive "endemic" form of KS was uncovered in African blacks. Still, there was no evidence the disease was transmissible or contagious. Suddenly with the introduction of HIV into the homosexual community, scientists began to view KS as a contagious "gay cancer" out of Africa.

The new KS virus is closely related to a monkey tumor virus, known as herpes virus saimiri, that was extensively studied by researchers in the VCP in the decade before the epidemic. Initially found only in KS from AIDS patients, the new KS virus has also been found in non-AIDS-related KS tumors and in other forms of cancer, such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

HIV is a cancer-causing virus. Infection with HIV (with or without the KS virus) has resulted in a noticeable increase in various forms of cancer. A 2005 study of over 4000 AIDS patients showed higher rates of melanoma, basal and squamous cell skin carcinomas, anal carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and Hodgkin disease, when compared with age-adjusted rates for the general United States population.

The KS virus is now in the U.S. blood supply; and blood is not screened routinely for this virus. A 2001 study indicated that 15% of normal Texas blood donors showed evidence of KS virus infection in the blood. A 2002 study of healthy children (ages 4-13) in South Texas showed that 26% had antibodies to the KS virus in their blood.

Is AIDS a man-made disease?

How did these two viruses of primate origin get into the gay male population to cause AIDS and a contagious form of cancer? AIDS experts blame monkeys and chimps in the African jungle. My research indicates it is much more likely these viruses were introduced during government-sponsored hepatitis B experiments using gays as unsuspecting guinea pigs. Extensive documentation of past "secret medical experiments" by the government can be found on Google. A recent BBC news report (30 Nov 2004) uncovering unauthorized and dangerous HIV drug experiments on infants and children in New York City orphanages can be found by Googling: BBC + guinea pig kids.

Until proven otherwise, a "new" HIV retrovirus and a "new" KS virus could easily have been developed in a laboratory as part of the Virus Cancer Program. In the decade before AIDS it was common to transfer and adapt primate retroviruses and herpes viruses into human cells in genetic engineering experiments. Such viruses were deemed potential "candidate human viruses," as clearly stated in the annual progress reports of the VCP. For further details on the relationship of the VCP to the introduction of HIV, Google: virus cancer program + AIDS.

The connection between the hepatitis experiments and the AIDS epidemic was quickly dismissed by government authorities two decades ago. However, it is clear from a review of the scientific literature that the "gay plague" began immediately after the government experiments; and the experiments permanently damaged the health of the gay community, and led to continuing spread of HIV into the "general population."

Are we to believe that all this is merely a coincidence -and that AIDS in America resulted simply from two viruses jumping species in the African jungle? Or is the origin of HIV and AIDS -and the KS virus- related to secret medical research and covert human testing, as suggested here.

[Dr. Alan Cantwell is a retired dermatologist; and the author of five books on the man-made origin of AIDS and the infectious origin of cancer, all published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029 (www.ariesrisingpress.com). Email: alancantwell@sbcglobal.net. Abstracts of 30 published papers can be found at the PubMed website. Many of his personal writings can be found on www.google.com by typing in key words "alan cantwell" + articles. His latest book is Four Women Against Cancer: Bacteria, Cancer and the Origin of Life. His books are available on www.amazon.com and through Book Clearing House @ 1-800-431-1579]

In independent Congo, there were more Belgian nationals than Haitians at the time mentioned by Worobey . Why did a Haitian national contract the virus and not a Belgian national?

Premise # 2

Haitian nationals who were in the Congo, migrated to Europe, Canada, and the United States before going to Haiti. The reason being, that most of them were political refugees and would not venture to Haiti under Duvalier. Did they also carry the virus to Europe, Canada and the US from the Congo.

Premise # 3

Dr. Michael Worobey for a long time had been fighting the OPV theory of the AIDS outbreak,which stipulates that "the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's testing of an oral polio vaccine (OPV) on human subjects
Is he trying to drown the fish by pointing the American public to another direction, when he wrote this controversial essay? I urge all who are interested to read the conclusion of Edward Hooper and Tom Curtis on the origin of AIDS. There is also a very illustrative video on "youtube.com on this subject. http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=1309475689067914080&q=origine+du+sida

Dr. Michael Worobey is only a medical hit man. There is a whole system behind him trying concealing very important medical facts, if revealed would prove very catastrophic to the medical scientific community and even more to certain pharmaceutical giants that are constantly using poor countries human and animal populations as guinea pigs. As the man says : “Follow the money”

To suggest that Haitians were the only people to travel to the Congo in the 1960s and later America is ridiculous. Europeans and Americans travelled there as well. Not to mention that HIV was detected in the blood of a Norwegian sailor who had traveled to the Congo in 1959 and in English sailor in 1976. Anyway, rumor has is that a lawsuit is about to be filed on behalf of some of these Haitian professionals who worked in Africa around the supsect time and who whose reputations have been damaged by Dr. Worobey and his gang.

these alleged findings are vicious and cruel to the Haitian people. I would think that my sentiments would be shared by anyone with a heart for humanity and their fellow man, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, economic background and so forth. Further more, I think the media has a responsability and should look to maintain their integrity, which in my opoinion is questioned everytime an article of this kind is published.

these alleged findings are vicious and cruel to the Haitian people. I would think that my sentiments would be shared by anyone with a heart for humanity and their fellow man, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, economic background and so forth. Further more, I think the media has a responsability and should look to maintain their integrity, which in my opoinion is questioned everytime an article of this kind is published.

After reading briefly on the article in question and reading the reactions. I must admit I am baffled. I am a haitian woman born in Haiti and spent some of my life there. One can say I was raised here and there. What baffles me is that not many of the article's readers are focused much on what the article said. It seems to me the scientists who authored the study do have reason to believe that the virus migrated from Haiti to the U.S. Not to say this might not cause surge of malfeasance from those who are afraid of anything different. Not to say this might not cause a surge of exclusion when it comes to dealing with haitians. However, to say that these scientists are racist, I believe is pure fiction.

What about the notion that they are picking on the poor? If anyone be they haitian, black, white or anything want to make this an issue of race and socioeconomic status then be aware that in 1969 up to the early 1980s the haitians who traveled were mostly rich "mulatres" Also, the authors did not say Haitians were the only ones who traveled there. What it said was that the virus (the specific strain in question) traveled exclusively to haiti from the congo then went to the us.

So you disagree with the research? Do you own research, someone mentioned that there is evidence the virus was found in a college student long before this strain that was discovered to have come directly from Haiti (where it migrated exclusively from congo). Perhaps the case that was discovered prior to te 1969 discovery is from someone who had relations with someone who was in congo or that person had a blood transfusion. People there is a lot of info out there to be found out, go look for it. I'm sure many of us posting here are very educated and have the researching skills to verify whether or not this info is legit so I suggest spending time doing that rather than screaming racism, bigotry and all other names that we can think of.

AIDS does not recognize race and neither does science. I understand that at some point science was bigotted and belived that blacks had small brains and this and that but folks this is 2007, not to say there isn't any more ignorant people out there saying stupid stuff but to automatically make those assumptions about this team of scientist is absurd. How about you look them up and check out their credentials and their history first before calling them racists and bigots. Can it be proven that they indeed have a history of doing research that are base on loose facts solely for the purpose of making racist conclusions?

My opinion on this article is this. It's a big step forward, we now have more info than we did in the past. To the person who made the comment that the early deaths were being ignored. These people were being treated initially for TB and died a couple months after being discharged. Did you know that some TB strains may need months and sometimes over a year to treat? To all I say do your research both on the issue itself and mostly on those whom you are screaming bigot and racist at before threatening with lawsuits and such.

Haitians couldnt have brought aids into america, we are not even half the population we are not even 25 percent of the population. I guess they forgot that aids used to mean "G.R.I.D" Gay related immune deficiency until they gay doctors changed it to Aids.

As a Haitian American, When I read about Dr. Michael Goettlieb’s findings the first thing I did is run to my wife asked her when her uncle who was a professor in the Congo’s retuned to Haiti and she responded around 1969-1970’s!!!!!

Yes, poor countries like Haiti did recycle needles and have lots of filth in the country that they need to clean along with better sewage systems.

Therefore, I have at least if anything come to term with some of the questions I had when this nightmare started 20 years ago.

After 20 plus years of questioning the underlying reasons why someone in America would shy away from me or not getting a job that I knew for sure I had:

I have come to one conclusion. The Haitian American communities need to spend more time organizing their country man and women in an effort to re-establish their own country and dignity.

There is no one to blame but yourselves for this, because any outsider can make you sell your country man out by flashing paper while moving your gold through the back-door.

Haiti still has a lot of potential if we pledge to reunite and do the hard work.
What ever debt can be repaid, dignity restored and lesson learned your new testament.

If there is anything that the Haitians needs to focus on as positive that can spring from this experience is to start taking meticulous notes to what groups and nationalities are practicing bestiality as we speak so when the next human shocker comes around that we should at least be able show them documented history of who’s indulging.

Jackie when you are so convinced about what this plague is and “STOP the practices which spread deadly diseases”
Are you making reference to billions of people that colonialism have killed and continues to in so many ways including hypocritical sexual practices?
Or the prominent groups that are actually practicing bestiality among other sexually deviant acts?

To those that are bringing the Bible into this you need to get a clue, because you don’t practice what you teach by a long shot and this is where I would agree with Jackie when she states that if we had shred of brain we would right our own to include a never again clause which states “Death Before Dishonor” while reinventing our own existence and refrain from the rest of your arrogance that you continually blame on the from.

It's been always like that for the longest, fingers are always pointed to others to turn away from the truth.

I go to Florida A&M University, I had an african american study professor. at the end, his opinion predict the black race will once again rise because of the ozone layer hole gradually increasing and deadly rays increasingly spreading. at a time a great portion of the white race will suffer skin cancer and the melanin of the black skin actually absorb those deadly rays, become stronger and make us darker and will allow us to withstand these new conditions while for the white race their skin tissue burn

what he predict could be true and nobody is thinking about it or make deep research.

people can enjoy these present day to point fingers to people and let media turn us away from the big pictures that will affect our descendants thousands of years later, nature will strike again hard and without pity to what we have made it become for all these years

While we are on the subject of why there is a major suspicion among Haitians about the true motivation and relative morality of their so called oppressors please check this link out. Then please make your own judgment about the deep rooted historical outrage among Haitians.

I am glad that you think it is amusing to pick on Haitians and classify their right to practice what they choose as Satan worship.

If you weren’t a coward you would focus your energy right here attacking the groups in the United States that had spelled their Satan worshiping in your face.

I also find it amusing that your types can use this so called gods words as the very weapon to attack others. It seems very easy for you to indulge yourself in the classification of others as a god self proclaimed god fearing creature.

Yes I guess if I was in your shoes I would cling on to the bible too, because those stories in it can only serve people like you that have roam the world to de-root descent human beings out of their habitats for your superficial ambitions into slavery.

Furthermore, when they revolt against your evil crusades your retaliation is to boycott them into oblivion with own self perpetuated illusions of good and evil and depriving them with financial burdens.

The irony in your statements about Haiti is further acknowledgement of five plus centuries of suffering you as an Anglo group has imposed on a single vulnerable race.

You should urge congress to pass a bill and start the criminal prosecution of all X-Slave sympathizers and owners because the Nazis cannot ever catch up with their magnitude of crime to humanity in the name of Jesus and cultural differences.

I can see why you would advocate your subliminal racism as a craft, because the bible you are peddling is the root of oppression in its well engineered way of saying that a slave is always a slave and should remain a slave. What Ex-Slave owner in their right minds wouldn’t cling to such filth, when it can be used as their after math dope to the masses.

I further understand your animosity against my “Nation”, because your comfort zone is in the knowing that X-Slaves can still be used for modern slavery when they understand that you did them a favor by setting them conditionally free “as long as they know their place.

The worst part is that it works because you have managed to keep them divided by deliberately fabricating Haiti as the future of any black man who dares guide their own future in the world. Well done.

For some of you in the black race that is in agreement with your x-slave master because of their conditioning of you with the bible as their weapon, I pray to “god” that you do understand they are just grazing you for the next crusade.

Most important of all, much like Ancient Rome I can feel the inevitable panic in the world dialog as a civilization is coming to an end.
Why don’t you go pick on the Arabs while you wait to be sanctioned by your own biblical conviction of right and wrong you coward?
I am sure they make you put your money where your mouth is because you could rampage them into your submission non-sense.
When an Arab comes on national television and states that he can by buy any American he wants with money why do turn the other chick and divert your self righteous crap to Haiti?

I'm not surprised that they found that HIV/AIDs originated from Haiti. People have a way to look for evidence to prove their biases and preconceived notions, yet it doesn't make it the whole truth.

Why hasn't anyone paid any attention to the other studies where it stated it started at a blood center in New York or the British study that says similarly, that it began spreading rapidly with the Hep B experiment. I would like more information on how this study disproves those studies.